// Panel 3A //
The Impact of Colonialism and Settler Colonisation

Discussant: Dr Adam J. Barker // University of Sheffield // Geography

Abstracts

Dr Alex Tepperman // University of Winnipeg // Criminology

Decolonizing the Bibliography: Colonial Legacies in Africa- and Asia-Directed Historical Criminology

While historical criminologists have devoted increasing attention to the Global South in recent years, the field has yet to fully address the continued, subtle role of colonialism present in how scholars develop research questions. Employing a content analysis of English-language historical criminology publications focused on Africa (n=179) and Asia (n=141), this paper contends that, since the 1970s, historical criminologists have overwhelmingly concerned themselves with former British colonies (such as Kenya and India) while ignoring major regions of the Global South that experienced colonization under non-British regimes (such as DR Congo and Indonesia). This trend signifies a tendency within the field to demure from studying regions that did not experience British colonial rule, thereby excising them from broader academic discussions of global crime and justice history. This uneven scholarly attention is problematic, insofar as it encourages a “colonial gaze” that situates former British subjects as uniquely important and worthy of attention from Anglophone scholars. This paper concludes that, if historical criminology hopes to continue evolving as a global endeavor, scholars must make a conscious decision to pursue research in regions whose archives and cultures may be less accessible and familiar than those in the English-speaking world.

Biography

Alex Tepperman (PhD Florida) is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Tepperman is currently developing a monograph about the craft of historical criminology in a global context and has recently published on that topic in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice; Crime, History, and Societies; and the edited collection History and Crime (2021). In 2020, he received the Herman Diederiks Prize from the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice and the Foundation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

Deborah Lawson // University of Liverpool // Law

Article 19 UNCRC – Balancing Protection, Understanding Violence: Indigenous Child Protection in Colonial Settler States

Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) places obligations on States to take appropriate measures to protect children from all forms of violence, abuse and exploitation, creating ‘special protections’. Interpretations of Article 19 remain focused on child protection mechanisms which engage primarily with familial abuse. Indigenous children in post-colonial settler States Australia and Canada are reported to experience violence at highly disparate rates compared to non-Indigenous groups and are more likely to be engaged with State agencies concerned with child protection and juvenile justice processes.

This presentation discusses the conflict between Indigenous children’s individual rights to protection from violence, on the one hand, and broader forms of systemic harm which retain disadvantage and disparity in life opportunities for Indigenous collective communities, on the other. As such it explores the role of Article 19 in relation to complex cycles of intergenerational harm, and contemporary power imbalances between the State and Indigenous peoples. It posits that, by considering violence broadly and in collaboration with additional UNCRC provisions such as the right to non-discrimination and the right to life, survival and development, Article 19 could provide better protection for children whose families have experienced colonial dominance and cultural, political and social erosion.

Biography

Deborah Lawson is a postgraduate researcher and graduate teaching fellow at the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on interpretations and the (mis)application of the UNCRC’s Article 19 - children’s right to be free from all forms of violence. This thesis asks if the UNCRC adequately recognises forms of violence perpetrated towards Indigenous children in postcolonial settler states. An active member of the European Children’s Rights Unit, she is currently contributing to the development of a series of online materials for the National Centre for Research Methods archive concerning theoretical approaches to children’s rights.

Dr Alex Winder // Brown University // Middle Eastern Studies

Settler-Colonialism and Agrarian Crime: A Genealogy from Palestine to Ireland

This paper examines agrarian crime, a category applied by Britain in nineteenth-century Ireland and later in Mandate Palestine. The British did not use this term elsewhere, and this paper thus explores connections and divergences between these two contexts. It shows how settler-colonialism produced anxieties and tensions around land among colonial administrators and colonized populations; how authorities sought to address these tensions via wide-ranging legal interventions, justified beforehand and afterward by reference to agrarian crime; and how closer investigation of the cases that comprised this category illuminate anti-colonial resistance, but also internal dynamics of societies transformed by settler-colonialism. Agrarian crime encompassed a variety of charges that police and politicians linked by setting, motive, or target. In both Ireland and Palestine, this category was used to justify broadening colonial police powers, through various Crimes Acts in nineteenth-century Ireland and, in Palestine, Collective Punishment and Prevention of Crimes ordinances. Disaggregating and examining “agrarian crime” in Ireland and Palestine, meanwhile, illuminates the specific effects of settler-colonialism in each, from a top-down perspective (how it shaped law and policing), but also from the bottom up, as settler projects put pressure on rural Irish and Palestinians, producing anti-colonial responses, but also internal disputes and tensions.

Biography

Alex Winder is a visiting assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies at Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies. His research focuses on policing and lawbreaking in Mandate Palestine. His first book, Between Jaffa and Mount Hebron: The Diaries of Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Shrouf, 1943­–1962, was published in Arabic by the Institute for Palestine Studies in 2016. His work is published in Radical History Review, Journal of Palestine Studies, Biography, and AlMuntaqa, among other venues. He is former executive editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly, and will begin serving as its co-editor in January 2022.